About “Brooklyn's Finest”

In an interview with Billboard, the co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records Kareem “Biggs” Burke recalled the studio session for this song:

This is something that we were dying to get done…Dame actually gave Clark [Kent] the sample for that song. Then, when Biggie and Jay sat at the board, the engineer came and dropped a pad and a pen right in between them. Jay looks at it and then he pushes it over to Big. Big looks at it and pushes it back. That’s the time they realized that neither one of them wrote lyrics [down on paper].

Jay actually went in and did everything in five minutes. He broke down the song and left all these parts [for Big]. It was a different type of beat at that time. Biggie was trying to really catch the beat and when he left, he said, “When I give you a song to rhyme on for my album, I’ma make sure it’s a regular beat so you could do a straight sixteen, not all this breakdown.”

When I contacted Bad Boy for Big’s clearance, Puff wouldn’t, couldn’t grant us the full single rights. Big had been on almost everybody’s records and Arista didn’t want him to be overexposed. … I remember being on the phone once again begging for Puff to let Big rock on a single and video, and Puff asking me, ‘Yo, what the eff is a Jay-Z? I can’t get Clive Davis to clear Big on some unknown rapper’s record.’ To his credit, Puff did let the Roc keep the song on the album.

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Was this the first collaboration between B.I.G. and Jay?

This was the first time they ever appeared on wax together. Although they’d met prior to the recording of this song, thanks toClark Kent this was their first encounter in a studio environment.

What have the artists said about the song?

Producer Clark Kentsaid he was forced to write the hook for the record:

I had to sit down and write a hook because they left me in the studio. We were at the mix session and I’m like, “You guys have to give me a hook” and they were like, “Scratch something.” Then Jay walked out like, “I’ll be back.”

Why is this song one of the most important in Jay's back catalogue?

Notorious B.I.G. was the King of New York during the mid 90s. Countless rappers, producers, and entrepreneurs have been quoted saying they looked up to the rapper. Clark Kent recalls the recording of this song as the time Jay and B.I.G. because more than just fellow rappers, they became friends:

That’s also the day Jay and Big became friends, so it’s like, right then and there they became friends. All of a sudden you see them together and interacting with each other.